AX1200 smoke, welded/melted PCIe connectors

A few days ago, my machine was sitting idling at the windows desktop while I was downstairs when I smelled a burning smell, went upstairs and found the PC off and the room full of smoke.

 

Not a great experience, as you can imagine.

 

The system is a 2600k on a Maximus IV Extreme with SLI 580s etc. The PSU is a Corsair AX1200 which I brought at the same time as getting all the other parts of the system about a year and a half ago.

 

After the smoke incident, I took the motherboard and CPU out and took them to a local PC shop to get them to test, and they found the CPU OK but the motherboard (Asus Maximus IV extreme) was dead. Thinking that was the only problem, I ordered an identical replacement motherboard, and stripped the system down today to fit it.

 

While I was at it, I figured I'd best test the PSU outputs to ensure I wasn't about to damage the new motherboard, so I looked up some pinouts, broke out my multimeter, bridged the pins to fire the PSU up and tested away.

 

Everything looked OK at first, 24-pin ATX checks out with normal voltages, same for the molex power connections, then I tested the PCIe 6+2 connectors. One pair were fine, with 3 pairs of +12v/GND and GND/GND on the 2-pin part. The second set had +12v on 2 pairs, on each, but one pair on each were wierd - like +3.5v and +4v or thereabouts.

 

I immediately raised an RMA with Corsair before even removing the PSU, but now I have removed it I'm not suprised there was a lot of smoke - the PCIe connectors at the PSU end of the modular cables on the 2 faulty outputs have basically welded themselves into the PSU and cannot be removed. Sniffing around the socket, there is still a very strong smell even days later like the one at the time of the incident.

 

I have inspected my graphics cards very closely (GTX580s) and both look fine - no popped or bubbled chips, no swollen capacitors, no charring or burned bits, no smell of burning.

 

I wonder if anyone has any input on how safe it's going to be to test my graphics cards on my new motherboard when a replacement PSU arrives. I am concerned that I might plug everything back in and kill another motherboard, possibly kill another graphics card or whatever. I don't even know now which graphics card was plugged into the cables that have melted, as they have been out of the system sitting around since I first took the mobo and cpu out for testing.

 

I literally have no idea now if the entire system could be fried. I have SSDs in RAID, multiple HDDs, sound and RAID cards and of course the 580s, I just hope this hasn't bricked them all.

 

So, how do I proceed in terms of testing stuff to ensure I don't do any further damage when putting this all back together?

 

Also, does anyone know if Corsair will pay for replacements if their PSU has destroyed my system?

WOW!! makes me wanna remove my AX1200 and buy another brand as your not the first person I have heard that their Corsair psu went up in smoke and I have 2 GTX 580's also at big money if I lose them. anyway I am not sure how you can test those 580's except in your new system but I would install 1 at a time with nothing else installed and see if they power up.

Seriously? I brought this thing because it was, as far as I could tell, regarded as the best and most reliable PSU available. It has been no trouble at all until now, and up until now I would say I was very pleased with it. I just hope this hasn't taken my whole system with it.

 

Yeah, I guess I can test one graphics card at a time, but the issue is still that if one has a fault that could kill the new motherboard, I don't know which one it is and can't do anything (that I can think of) to test without running the risk of incurring further failures and cost.

 

I can't understand why, with the cables being melted at the PSU end, there is nothing visible on either graphics card that would indicate a fault - that end of the cables is fine, and as I said the 580s also look fine on visual inspection.

 

I am crapping myself right now that this has destroyed the whole system, I suppose the only consolation is that when they tested at the shop the CPU was OK, so hopefully that also goes for the GPUs, SSDs, HDDs, sound and RAID cards, memory etc.

 

Do you know if Corsair have reimbursed people for damage caused to other components when these other cases of PSU failure have occured?

I am thinking your cards are o.k. as the power cables to them melted at the power supply and I think the power supply has a safety feature that kicked off the power before your cards were damaged, also can you remove the covers from the graphics cards to inspect the boards a little better? it's easy to take the cards apart as I have done mine to install better thermal paste to the gpu. I have seen on the forums where it was mentioned that Corsair would reimburse for damage if it was in fact their fault but I never saw any follow ups on it so I am not 100% sure.

Seriously? I brought this thing because it was, as far as I could tell, regarded as the best and most reliable PSU available.

I'm really sorry to hear you had a failure like that. But try to keep an open mind about it. EVERY PSU manufacturer has failures like this at one time or another. And i can assure you the failure rate of these PSU's are quite low.

 

You would be the first AX1200 that i have seen come through the forums here in the almost two years that i have been around ,and only three or four others. Take that into account along with the thousands they sell every month, and well, you get the idea. :) I'm sure right now that is of little comfort to you at this point. I'm sure anyone else would be thinkng the same thing including myself. It's alot of money and hard work that could possibly be on the line.

 

But try to get everything tested out first and see exactly what is damaged and what is not and go from there..

 

o you know if Corsair have reimbursed people for damage caused to other components when these other cases of PSU failure have occured?

 

As far as the damage goes, i hope you took pictures of the damage , melted connectors and such. As you may need this for confirmation when asking for reimbursement. Some sort of confirmation from your local shop may be a good idea too.

 

I'm not saying this is the case, but it could have been the MB that shorted out , which in turn took out the PSU. It's hard to tell in these situations. Which is why I made the comment to try to keep an open mind and not immediately blame one party or the other. Please don't get me wrong, it very well could have been the PSU just as easily.

 

Corsair has in the past replaced damaged components but it is strictly on a case by case basis. You will need to provide as much proof as you can . Receipts and so on. It's set up that way to keep people from claiming damage that was not caused by Corsair components.

 

Just to add to this you will need to call CS by phone and discuss this all with them because this is something that can not be handled here on the forums.

 

I believe there will be other forms you will need to fill out besides the standard RMA form.

 

I wish you good luck and i am sure Corsair will do everything they can to help you out!

 

If you can please post a follow up and let us know how you make out.

I'm really sorry to hear you had a failure like that. But try to keep an open mind about it. EVERY PSU manufacturer has failures like this at one time or another. And i can assure you the failure rate of these PSU's are quite low.

 

Yes, I'm sure it is a rare occurrence. Normally, if I read something like this, I would not worry unduly about my own PSU for the same reasons you identified - thousands sold, and only a few bad failures.

 

As you said though, that doesn't really help right now since it's me it's happened to.

 

 

As far as the damage goes, i hope you took pictures of the damage , melted connectors and such. As you may need this for confirmation when asking for reimbursement. Some sort of confirmation from your local shop may be a good idea too.

 

I have the PSU still here, so I will take pictures, but there is only a very limited amount you can see - casual inspection of the PCIe connectors where they are welded in wouldn't reveal anything - if you look _very_ closely, you can see down one of the holes without a wire in it where there seems to be a molten pool of metal.

 

I don't really think there's anything else to take pictures of - every other component in the system looks normal on visual inspection as far as I can tell, so there's really nothing there to document, but the motherboard has gone without any visible charring so I guess it's possible the same has happened with other parts.

 

I am sure if necessary the local shop could confirm that they've seen the fried motherboard, which I was just about to RMA to Asus, but now I'm wondering whether I should, since I don't know if it was faulty or was killed by the PSU.

 

I'm not saying this is the case, but it could have been the MB that shorted out , which in turn took out the PSU. It's hard to tell in these situations. Which is why I made the comment to try to keep an open mind and not immediately blame one party or the other. Please don't get me wrong, it very well could have been the PSU just as easily.

 

Yes, I appreciate that would be a possibility to consider, however I just can't see how the PCIe connectors could be melted at the PSU end because of a faulty motherboard. Certainly not in the absence of any visible damage to the PCIe slots, graphics cards etc.

 

Also, nothing had changed - the PC had been in use daily, and was just idling at the time, so it seems exceedingly unlikely that anything shorted the motherboard.

 

Overall, I have now lost a lot of faith in this PSU - I used to believe that the single rail design was fine, and that any damage that 100 amps could do, 30 could do just as well, but after seeing what this thing has done I am not so sure - this thing must have dumped _a lot_ of current through those melted plugs before it tripped, and had my parrots been upstairs I'm pretty sure the smoke would have killed them.

 

I also leave my PC on overnight often (Not to mention having a vmware box and a fileserver, both with Corsair PSUs in them, that run 24/7) and given the amount of damage a fire while we were asleep wouldn't seem out of the question, although thankfully that didn't happen. The fileserver has an AX850 and the vmware box has a VX 450w so now I guess I have them to worry about, but as you said this kind of failure is rare and you can't go worrying about it too much, but I specifically brought Corsair PSUs for both of those systems because of my great experience (up to now) with my AX1200.

 

I think I'm going to ask customer service if they will replace it with an AX1200i as I understand you can set up "virtual" rails with overcurrent protection at lower thresholds than the full 100A, so hopefully it would trip out sooner if anything like this happened again.

 

I am going to call customer service when they open. I have had a positive experience with Corsair C/S before when I had some faulty RAM that had to be replaced, but I've never had anything this bad happen.

 

I will definitely report back how things go.

I understand where your coming from on all accounts. I was just offering possible scenarios that MIGHT have happened.

In any case I dont think you'll have a problem with CS, they are a good bunch of people. They may even ask for you to send it to them for further testing, not because it failed, or they don't believe you, but for them to do a detailed failure analysis just to see if there are any possible problems that might effect other AX PSU''s

 

In ay case I wish you good luck and i hope the rest of your components are okay .

 

Cheers!

ANOTHER problem with maximus board and corsair psu.Main trend I'm seeing is maximus motherboards. It may be corsair psu everytime, but its not always the same psu. Different psu's are manufactured by different companies. Personally the amount of maximus boards I've seen come threw these forums I'd never touch one.

ANOTHER problem with maximus board and corsair psu.Main trend I'm seeing is maximus motherboards. It may be corsair psu everytime, but its not always the same psu. Different psu's are manufactured by different companies. Personally the amount of maximus boards I've seen come threw these forums I'd never touch one.

 

Hi,

 

Can you provide any links for this, I've just tried a bunch of searches on google using site:forum.corsair.com with terms containing maximus, psu and other relevant words and can't really find anything. I'd be interested to read about any other cases of fried Maximus boards in conjunction with Corsair PSUs.

I forgot about that HOODED, you pointed that out a few months ago...

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107054&highlight=ASUS+maximus+PSU

Heres one to start , ill dig up more for you...

 

And a few more...

 

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107514

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107706

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=105914

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=105644

 

here are the rest of the results page for my search

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/search.php?searchid=6548482

I'm sure there are more, just the ones i found real quick.

Just a quick update, I have spoken to customer service and been sent a damage claim form.

 

I was rather surprised to receive a form that contained the following statement:

 

"If your damage claim is approved, your Corsair product(s) will be replaced and you may receive additional compensate for NON Corsair product(s) up to the following amounts:

Motherboard - $100

CPU - $200

Video Card - $150"

 

I can't imagine that anyone who owns an AX1200 has a motherboard worth less than $100, or GPUs worth less than $150.

 

Frankly, I think it's rather shocking (no pun intended) that a company would send a customer who has had an extremely expensive PSU fail in a dramatic and potentially dangerous way a form that, right off the bat, comes out trying to shun or limit their liability.

 

My motherboard, which I know is fried, is worth far more than $100. I also have a ton of other expensive components which I can't test at the moment since I have no PSU, so this could quickly become very expensive if the PSU has fried anything else. As far as I'm concerned, if their product has failed and caused other damage because of that, Corsair have a legal and moral responsibility to make good that damage in full.

 

I don't know yet what will come of all this, and will obviously update the thread as things progress. I am hoping this is going to go more smoothly than the statement above in the Corsair form would suggest.

 

I am going to continue to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being and hope that their reputation for customer service is really deserved, but we will see how this goes.

An update, and a response to RAM GUY.

 

First, I have got a PSU to test with and have POSTed successfully with both GPUs (one at a time) tonight, so hopefully they are both OK, but I have yet to actually do anything more than get to the BIOS with them. The same applies to the CPU.

 

I'll update once more stuff has been tested.

 

I am sorry that you had this issue and that you feel that way but I might add most manufacturers do not even offer a service like this. Only warranty their own hardware.

 

I appreciate your message is likely meant in a helpful way, so I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but let's face facts - you are an employee of Corsair, and when you speak on here, you speak for them.

 

There's nothing special about this "service" - every manufacturer of anything has to be responsible for their products being fit for purpose. That is a legal requirement. It's not a "service" and there's nothing optional about it - if a product causes damage as a result of being unfit for purpose, then the manufacturer of that product are responsible for making good on that damage.

 

It seems to me that if a Corsair PSU malfunctions and ruins someones hardware (or carpets, or pets, or burns down their house), Corsair aren't doing anyone a favour by compensating them for the losses Corsair caused, they are simply complying with the minimum requirements of the law.

 

But if you have concerns or questions I am sorry this is not the correct place to debate that issue.

 

On the contrary, this is _exactly_ the place to debate this - other potential customers who read this will know what to expect if they experience a failure that causes other damage, and will be able to make educated buying decisions as a result.

 

I think there is a general perception that Corsair customer service is "excellent" - that's certainly what I believed when I sunk a bunch of cash into expensive Corsair stuff.

 

Finding out that Corsair will try to limit their responsibility for damage they caused to someones stuff is likely to be of huge interest to people in the market for a PSU, so I think there can be no better place to discuss it than in a public forum such as this.

 

When you take someones money in exchange for a PSU, you probably do so more often than not because they have a perception that the extra money they spend on Corsair hardware rather than another brand buys them not just a quality product, but also a good experience and solid after-sales service.

 

So far, my contact with Corsair after having one of their PSUs melt its connectors filling the room with smoke (which should be impossible due to overcurrent protection, even if the PSU was not the component at fault in the first place), has consisted of:

 

a. A phone call where the customer service operative seemed like she couldn't wait to get me off the phone, followed by over an hours wait to receive an email that I was told she was sending me while we were talking on the phone.

 

b. A form that purports to limit your liability for consequential damages, which I don't believe to be something you have the right to do in law.

 

c. A Corsair employee replying to me on the forum, basically telling me that you're doing me a favour by saying you'll give me $100 for my wrecked $400 motherboard, and that I should shut up and stop making a fuss in public, and discuss it only privately with you.

 

So far, I am not impressed.

 

I think a lot of your customers would like to know that if their PSU melts its connectors and fills the room with acrid smoke, imparting the rancid stench of burned electronics to their home furnishings, that Corsair will be good enough to send them a form that asks that customer to consent to a limitation of liability, and offering to chuck them a hundred and fifty bucks for their fried GPUs. On that kind of money, our unlucky punter could probably afford a 550 TI to replace their bricked quad-sli 690s.

 

 

In addition, it has not be proven that our PSU was at fault, so lets not hang it before we convict it please!

 

Well, this update seems to me to strongly reinforce the case against the PSU - now I know the GPUs work (at least POST), I can't see how the PCIe connectors being melted in at the PSU can be anything other than a PSU failure, given that the GPUs seem OK.

 

Quite apart from that, any and all of the discussion up to this point applies _if_ the PSU _is_ responsible, either in my case, or in any other case. The "limits" referred to in the form sent to me surely only apply if Corsair accept that their product has caused damage - if it wasn't the PSU that caused the problem then the "limits" wouldn't apply anyway, since Corsair wouldn't be responsible for any of it.

 

These "limits" are clearly meant to apply to cases where Corsair do accept that their PSU has damaged someones property, and will then try to offer only partial compensation for that damage.

That is awful, Corsair should compensate you fully for that plus maybe give you some sort of goodwill gesture, but Corsair are not as good as i thought they were as i found out to my cost.

I forgot about that HOODED, you pointed that out a few months ago...

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107054&highlight=ASUS+maximus+PSU

Heres one to start , ill dig up more for you...

 

And a few more...

 

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107514

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107706

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=105914

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=105644

 

here are the rest of the results page for my search

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/search.php?searchid=6548482

I'm sure there are more, just the ones i found real quick.

 

I think someone needs to look into this further. I don't blame the psu. You may have gotten 1 random, very rare psu with an issue that could have came from any company. I doubt there is any other company around that would give u 1 cent towards your motherboard without taking them to court for it. IMO this is a some kind of incompatibility between the psu and motherboard. As rare as it might be I don't believe I've seen any other motherboards/psu fry on these forums. Other than ones with a maximus motherboard. I'd grab a ud7 and ur rma ax1200 and never touch a maxim us again.

I don't blame the psu.

Not wanting to pour fuel on the flames (ok bad choice of words :-) some, if not all of the blame has to be with the PSU.

Whatever kicked off this massive 'over power' the PSU should have tripped long before doing that sort of damage!

OK, ill agree with that. I've beat the living **** out of my hx1050 (470 tri sli @780/2000) and its dumped out the heat like crazy and is still going strong. Knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood, fingers crossed. My 750tx had sli 470@800/2000 and put out an insane amount of heat in 35°C ambients and is still going nearly 3 years later. I feel for ya, but it really seams to me to be a very rare enomoly. Mind u I'd still change motherboards as it is starting to be a trend.

also I would like to add that the graphics card power cables melting at the power supply have to be due to a defect in the power supply and not the mother board. now if the 24 pin cable melted at the mother board connection then I would look at a fault with the mother board and not the power supply.

Single 12v rail. A problem inside the power supply. Caused by motherboard or not could have manifested itself anywhere. Here nor there. Just my opinion ditch the maximus.

An update:

 

After being told on Thursday (30th August) that I should not return anything, and that I would be contacted within 1 to 2 working days, I have still not heard anything, receipt of my damage claim form has not even been acknowledged.

 

So, Corsairs "excellent" customer service also extends to telling me not to return the burned AX1200, then ignoring me.

 

Wonderful.

BorisTheSpider

With the Holiday here on Monday we have been a little backed up but we are working on your claim I am sure but to be sure please send it again and put "ATT Ram Guy Damage Claim" in the subject line and I will make sure that you get an reply by this afternoon.

 

Ram Guy,

 

Thankyou for your reply. I have just now emailed an updated damage claim, showing just the motherboard, marked for your attention.

 

As stated in the email, I still cannot say for sure that other stuff is not damaged as I haven't had a chance to do a lot of testing, but the main things like the SSDs, RAM, CPU etc. check out OK so far, so for now I have sent you details relevant only to the Motherboard which is known to be affected.

Okay I have your email and damage claim we are reviewing the case now, have you sent anything back to us yet?

 

No, nothing sent yet as when I first registered the damage claim I was told not to return anything.

 

I take it from the documents you sent, that you want both the PSU and motherboard sent to you?